Search - Linda Ronstadt :: Simple Dreams

R.Eileen B.
Reviewed on 9/28/2013...

She will always remain fabulous! This is one of her excellent recordings.

The rival to HEART LIKE A WHEEL.

Matt Coker | Davis, CA, USA | 04/10/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"SIMPLE DREAMS, released in 1977, displayed how far Linda Ronstadt's music had evolved since she recorded "Different Drum" (my favorite song) with the Stone Poneys ten years earlier. SIMPLE DREAMS is the most consistent and satisfying of any Linda Ronstadt collection, equal to HEART LIKE A WHEEL. Linda Ronstadt had a more Rock oriented backing band, and they album has great rockers and even better ballads. The opening track "It's So Easy", is radiant; the best version of the song I've heard. Linda's marvelous on Warren Zevon's "Carmelita", probably my favorite on the album. "Simple Man, Simple Dreams" is equally brilliant. The best way to listen to the poignant ballad "Sorrow Lives Here" would be a dark room with candles. You can hear the ache and sorrow in her voice. The saddness of "Sorrow Lives Here" isn't dispelled by the gorgeous traditional "I Never Will Marry". The scene set is soft and gentle, but demonstrates the remarkable control Linda has over her voice. Another winner is her giant selling single, the superb version of "Blue Bayou". It's breath-taking. Few things in this world are meant to rock as hard as Warren Zevon's "Poor Poor Pitiful Me", and few things do. Linda's voice is just as superior as it is on the ballads, but the tone is different, she rings with agression. The gentle touching "Maybe I'm Right" is throughly wonderful. Linda proves she can rock as hard as the Rolling Stones by covering their "Tumbling Dice", brilliantly I might add. I'm not overly fond of the closing "Old Paint", but that's just me, it's a great Old West song ballad, keeping Linda's Country/Folk roots close to her. SIMPLE DREAMS sold 3&1/2 million copies in less than a years time. Whether you're looking for excellent rockers: "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" OR "Tumbling Dice", affecting ballads: "Blue Bayou", "Sorrow Lives Here" or "Carmelita", or Country/Folk: "I Never Will Marry"; SIMPLE DREAMS has everything. That's why it's one of Linda Ronstadt's best, and one of Rock/Pop music's great classics."

Linda and her boys capture the landscape of Southern Califor

John Jenks | West Hollywood, CA | 02/24/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Simple Dreams to this day remains my Linda Ronstadt desert island disc if, Heaven forbid, I could only choose one. Let others genuflect on Heart Like a Wheel or those three ridiculous, effete Nelson Riddle albums. Ronstadt was always a more convincing interpreter of Eric Kaz than Gershwin or Ellington, which is nowhere more evident than on Sorrow Lives where -- acccompanied by only the late Don Grolnick's piano, mind you -- brave soul Ronstadt takes us on more harrowing curves and hairpin turns than a drunken Diana Ross driving down Topanga Canyon on her way to return some videos to Blockbuster. Indeed, Simple Dreams marked the last time Ronstadt was ever willing to get this down and this dirty, before she sent her chops off for vocal training in preparation for Gilbert & Sullivan. Before she became an artiste. Before she began over-enunciating her t's. Disco be damned, the album spawned four hits that were everywhere during the time, with Blue Bayou enduring to become her own New York, New York. Never mattered much to me that Ronstadt didn't seem to know what she was singing about on Warren Zevon's Poor Poor Pitiful Me or the Stones' Tumbling Dice; Linda was just keeping up with her boys. And there are lots of them, including Eagle Don Henley, Stone Poney crony Kenny Edwards, and the always welcome J.D. Souther. (I can see why she would do him.) Even Andrew Gold, who'd left her stable and was riding the charts in his own right with Lonely Boy, returned to mama in a cameo billed under the alias Larry Hagler. Only Dolly Parton's shimmering guest vocal on I Never Will Marry keeps Simple Dreams from being an all-male affair. Ronstadt would evolve as an artist over the next three decades and build an enviable catalogue that would have seemed unimagineable in 1977, but she would never again make an album as cohesive as Simple Dreams. (Although Cry Like A Rainstorm... comes close, except for those over-enunciated t's - "something's noT quiTe righT..." ) It's a shame to hear her disparage her 70's period as being not very musically interesting for a singer, dissing her hit records as (to paraphrase her) kinda sucking. If that's true, then Simple Dreams sucks. But in a GOOD way. In fact, ALL records should suck like this.



SERVING SUGGESTION: The Main Refrain by Wendy Waldman"